“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.Elves are terrific. They beget terror.The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.No one ever said elves are nice.Elves are bad.”

“The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.”

“We (people) only remembered that elves sang. But we forgot what they sang about.”

“… people didn't seem to be able to remember what it was like with the elves around. Life was certainly more interesting then, but usually because it was shorter. And it was more colorful, if you liked the color of blood.”

“She gazed out across the rooftops of Ankh-Morpork and reasoned like this: writing was only the words that people said, squeezed between layers of paper until they were fossilized (fossils were well known on the Discworld, great spiraled shells and badly constructed creatures that were left over from the time when the Creator hadn't really decided what He wanted to make and was, as it were, just idly messing around with the Pleistocene). And the words people said were just shadow of real things. But some things were too big to be really trapped in words, and even the words were too powerful to be completely tamed by writing.”

“Keep your vocabulary as wide as you can. I have some difficulty with the word ‘cool’, and I’m not too bothered about the word ‘awesome’. People like me are looking to people like you guys of the next generation to deal with this shit. It’s like seeing a rock guitarist pick up a Fender Stratocaster and hold it the wrong way.”

“Hello, little girl," he said, which was only his first big mistake. "I'm sure you want to know all about hedgehogs, eh?""I did this one last year," said Tiffany.The man looked closer, and his grin faded. "Oh, yes," he said. "I remember. You asked all those... little questions.""I would like a question answered today," said Tiffany."Provided it's not one about how you get baby hedgehogs," said the man."No," said Tiffany patiently. "It's about zoology.""Zoology, eh? That's a big word, isn't it.""No, actually it isn't," said Tiffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite small.”